Google has accused China of tampering with Gmail and China has denied it. But there can be no denying that the service is suffering from some sort of illness when used from within the confines of the Great Firewall.

The website greatfirewall.biz has tested the speed of Gmail in recent days and confirmed what many of us in China already knew: the email platform has slowed to a crawl. The tests found that Gmail – once a favorite here for its rumored superior security -- is now far slower that competitor Yahoo! mail.

Although Gmail hasn’t been outright blocked, its molasses-like speed when used without a Virtual Private Network to disguise a user’s China location makes it nearly unusable. The testers found that gmail is now 45 times slower than the Chinese platform QQ and eight times slower than Yahoo!

Brazil. Russia. India. China. Four rising economic and political powers. The BRIC Yard is written each day by GlobalPost senior correspondents who live and work in these four countries. Its purpose: to decode and demystify what’s really driving these complex and increasingly important places.